


Come Undone

by blythechild



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: F/M, Music, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:15:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evey awakens to the sound of distant music in the Shadow Gallery...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Undone

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Valentine's Day challenge response, and it is also clearly a music fic, which are popular in the fandom.
> 
> This story contains mature situations and sexual content. It should not be read by minors.
> 
> This is fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal entertainment.

It was very late, or very early, when she awoke in the dark. She had kept her bedroom door ajar so that a sliver of light would chase away the night terrors, but she also hoped that she would hear him return home. She always slept better when she knew that he had come back safely. But now, he was well past due and she had heard nothing.

Quietly, and in bare feet, Evey shuffled out into the dimly lit Gallery. She rubbed her eyes to shake the sleep and nightmares away: tonight she had had a bad one, and the little girl in her craved reassurance that she was untouchable here. She needed to feel safe, and, ridiculously, _he_ made her feel safe – her captor, a killer. Shivering as the cool of the stone floors leapt up her calves and under her nightshirt, she stood still and felt the Gallery acclimatize to her presence. That’s when she heard the faint sound of strings.

The music, high and sorrowful, was muted. The Wurlitzer was silent. The TV was off. Evey cocked her head to the side at an odd angle in order to capture the fleeting sound better, then she began walking. Past the TV room and past the piano nook, down the hallway towards the exercise room she followed the delicate tendril of notes. She did not have much call to be in this part of V’s home, and so it was with more than a bit of trepidation that she lingered on the threshold of his workout room where the sound had led her. The musical phrases, still muted, keened and stretched as they ached with unspent yearning. Such music spoke wordlessly of hearts rent apart and yet also of transformative revelations. Perhaps the musician was inspired by mortal love, but it could have easily been the result of religious revelry. Now the tendril laced it’s way around Evey’s chest and squeezed, as if trying the wring feeling from her by force.

She opened the door and found the exercise room dark, but the music was louder. The room itself was nearly soundproof which proved convenient when V wished to workout at night after Evey had gone to bed. With the room’s sanctity now breached, the music hit her like a fist, and after it pummeled her, it stroked every pore of her in rich, sad delight. Pulled in by the unbreakable tendril, she stumbled blindly into the room. Music swirled about her – a single, franticly intricate violin – dazzling and confusing her. She covered her ears to wrench some of herself back again, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. After a few moments she saw a small wedge of light along the far wall of the room. Was there another room attached to this one? If so, she had never known about it. With hands still cupped over her ears, she crept towards the light.

She reached the far wall and felt along its edge with her hands, and was once again enveloped by the music. When her toes slid into the light at the floor, her fingers felt the seam of a door. There was another room! Slowly and quietly she felt for the doorknob and turned it, opening the door enough to see a sliver of the room beyond.

The room was lit by one, shaded lamp giving only minimal light and casting gruesome shadows onto the walls. It was small, crowded floor to ceiling with books, just as her room was. In the corner sat a battered oak desk with still more books piled on it and directly next to the lamp was a well-used leather chair which currently hosted a cape, a hat, and a Guy Fawkes mask. The music accelerated with an almost crazed disregard to time signatures and suddenly a malevolent, elongated shadow danced across the wall behind the chair. Evey caught her breath in her throat and stifled the urge to flee as the shadow pulsed and throbbed manically with the music, until finally, its maker strolled into view. He walked calmly and slowly past the chair and towards his desk while his arms and upper body twitched and bent as if throttling the music from the violin held firmly between his chin and shoulder. His back was to the door and Evey, his face hidden by his wig, but Evey could see that his hands were ungloved and she assumed that he had removed his mask to play.

Evey had never seen V so lost, so involved in something that he was unaware of his surroundings. She had also never seen him play the violin before. His skill at the piano delighted her, but his ferocity at this instrument both frightened and attracted her. The music had hit a melodic interlude that hinted at greater turmoil to come: like the eye of a storm. She felt lured by it; she wanted to crawl into the room and curl under the furniture like a cat, feeling both lulled by and fearful of the player. She knew that she was trespassing in his private lair and she knew that there would be consequences to tracking and confronting a predator in his home. He was maskless, and though the room was dimly lit, he would be upset if she saw his face. But perhaps the biggest infraction was witnessing his _passion_ unfettered in this way: his feral pacing as he played, his violent movements, the unmistakably longing in his song. He had always held his feelings close to him around her, but seeing this, she now thought him more beast than man. This sudden thought tugged at her in a strangely powerful way. Unrestrained passion has a way of freeing those who witness it, but she felt some part of her, propriety maybe, fall away and free up a rawer sense of self to his display. Some base part of her wanted to stand in the furnace of his madness and show him that she was not afraid. Better than that: that she, herself, was similarly enflamed. 

V paced back away from his desk towards the far side of the room, his head bent over the delicacy of the passage. The notes were light and rich, like long awaited kisses, and they danced beyond him towards his secret appreciator shivering just outside the door. She had to make a decision: enter and face his wrath, or leave and return to her warm bed knowing that he was safe but also knowing his secret. Though the thought of having this knowledge of him was delicious, she felt certain that the memory of his passion would slowly burn a hole through her, eating her alive with teasing possibilities. That sort of torture was fun up to a point, but ultimately, it would only amount to escalating frustration on her part. Perhaps it was the effect of the music, but she wanted to _touch_ this knowledge, brazenly stroke it with admiration and she was not afraid to admit it to him. She was only afraid of his response. He would not hurt her – he liked her too much. Didn’t he? Evey bit her lip.

The music swelled again, and V arched back slightly as he renewed the force of his phrasing with skilled fingers. He had abandoned his doublet and was dressed only in his shirt, breeches and boots. Evey noticed that his shirt had no buttons and was closed at the neck and cuffs with small silk ties. His movements had loosened his shirt around him and had untied one of his cuff strings. The effect made him look wildly out of control and broad through his upper body while his lower half seemed precise and slight in comparison. Evey suddenly realized that she had been staring at his body for quite some time thinking about what it really looked like. Her face flushed and she felt her heart skip about a little. She flushed even deeper when she realized that her body had responded in kind to her unbidden thoughts and that her nightshirt was making a poor show of hiding it. What would he do if she wandered into his private sanctuary AND she appeared to be aroused? Without giving her mind a chance to think it over, her body made the first move.

Evey pushed through the door and padded silently across the thick layers of Persian rugs that criss-crossed the floor. She stood in the twilight gloom in the middle of everything and just drank in the music. Being so close to the instrument now, she felt the music as it vibrated through her chest, and up through her feet as well as in her ears. Every part of her thrummed with him and it was wondrous. She closed her eyes and let everything but the sound of longing fall away. Her toes curled on the carpet and her fingers picked at the edge of her nightdress as she strained to take in the enormity of the sonic expression. It was overwhelming – like standing in the path of a howling gale or experiencing the vertigo of staring over the edge of a waterfall. Suddenly and sharply, the music ended in mid-note. Evey opened her eyes.

V stood facing her, the violin still tucked under his chin, but his bow sagging in one hand. His chest was heaving from his exertions, but otherwise he was completely still. The room was so dark that all Evey could make out of him was his silhouette and the details of his lower body. His face remained in shadow, thanks to the wig, but she could see the glitter of reflected light where his eyes should be. Evey’s throat went dry as her courage evaporated with his music. She stood still and stared at him, willing herself to say _something_. Her hands clasped together in front of her as she struggled with her thoughts. She imagined, to her escalating horror, that she probably looked like she was 5 years old to him.

“Beautiful.” She blurted out, barely above a whisper.

The glitter in his face blinked several times, but he did not respond. 

“The music…I heard music and followed it here. It was so compelling…” she took a step towards him and he flinched noticeably “I had to follow it – I had no choice.”

His chest still heaved but she no longer thought that it was from his playing: he was on the verge of something and he was still making up his mind about it. A cold chill ran through her then, and yet she took another step towards him.

“I know that I shouldn’t be here,” she took another step “that you don’t want me here. I am trespassing and I know it, but …please…don’t…stop.”

She was now an arm’s length away from him and he still had not moved. She felt that if he did not do something soon, the tension she had unwittingly created between them might claim her. 

“The force of this expression,” she gestured to the violin “speaks to me in a way…that I can’t describe. I _feel_ that I might understand you better than you think, V. Do you believe that this is possible?”

Brazenly, she reached out to touch his bow hand and he flinched back so that she caught only the untied string of his shirt instead. She fingered the silk tie slowly and looked up to see that in a split second he had closed the gap between them and was standing very close to her. She looked up into the dark recesses of his face and saw something flit across the glow in his eyes.

“I’ve come undone.” He murmured darkly.

Evey bit her lip and nodded, unable to speak. She felt heat radiating off him, warming the chill that she did not know she possessed. His breath was coming in long, powerful draws that seemed almost designed to forcefully calm him and control his heart rate. She would have given anything to know what he was thinking in that moment and then he spoke, low and casual.

“Would you help me, Evey?”

She nodded again as he raised his bow hand above her shoulder for her to tie. As she reached for it, he touched his bow to the strings and began to play a quiet, lilting piece. She was amazed as she reached up to retie his cuff that he maneuvered his bow arm to circle around her neck as he played, effectively caging her between his arm and his chest. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt a full body flush rise from her toes to the top of her scalp. Slowly, his legs began to move, as if he was slow dancing, and she moved with him still caged between his arm and chest. His song turned into a dance in which he measured the rhythm with the music and his body together. He picked up the pace and arched his back as he lifted the instrument on his shoulder, forcing his chest to press into hers. Evey was unsure whether it was deliberate, but he did not flinch away from her this time, so she placed her hands on his hips in order to help her move with him better. 

As they moved in small circles, Evey looked up and watched V’s face hoping to see something more. He skillfully kept his face away from the light but she did notice that his eyes occasionally flicked down towards her. Gratified that he would tear his focus away from his composition even for an instant, she smiled and leaned her head against his chest. He jumped a little under her touch and Evey went still against him. He stopped moving but continued to play.

“It’s not you.” He murmured so that she felt the words through his chest rather than heard them. “Well, it is and it isn’t, I suppose…”

His song became tender and soft again. He bent a little so that his face was closer to her while he played.

“I’m afraid that the music might have brought you here under false pretenses. Passion in music comes and goes as swiftly as the notes do.”

“You play this passionately and it means nothing to you?”

“Oh course not. Every note comes from my soul, Evey.” His fingers flicked across the fingerboard with a dexterity that suddenly made Evey feel quite warm. “But I cannot know the depths of _your_ heart…”

Evey felt the beat of his heart increase against her cheek and she understood what he was trying to say. She gripped him closer, pressing her hips and her chest against him in unspoken response, then she moved her hips in time with his song and encouraged him to dance with her again. A rumble echoed in his chest under her ear and she smiled into his shirt. _Even when I risk, I feel safe with you_ , she thought.

Her hands reached around his waist and one finger found a spot where his loose shirt had revealed a patch of bare skin. She fingered the spot lightly as he tried to twist away from her. His texture was different and she wanted to explore it with her fingers as she had done earlier with her thoughts. Taking her new advantage with him in hand, she slid both hands beneath his loose shirt and freed the tails from his breeches. His chest contracted as he breathed in sharply and his stomach muscles tightened, but she leaned her head heavily into his chest and whispered his name against his shirt with her lips to ease him. Though every fiber of him seemed to tighten, he continued to play.

Evey’s hands played over his sides and his lower back lightly, tracing intricate trails over his scars. His muscles twitched as she moved but soon she realized that it was not from aversion, but from sensitivity. She brought her hands forward under his shirt and between their chests, and traced muscle groups up and down his torso. As she circled his nipples, he missed a note. Evey giggled and pressed herself against him. Then her fingers languorously trailed down his chest and skimmed the waist of his breeches. V missed another note. Smiling against his chest, Evey took a deep breath and unbuttoned the top of his waistband.

V stopped playing entirely and moved a step away as he released her. His face was turned to the darker side of the room and she could see that he was breathing hard again. She stepped towards him and he backed away again, uncertain of how to ward her off with the violin and bow still in his hands.

“I’m sorry, Evey…” He stammered. “I’m sorry that I woke you.”

“Too late for apologies – the deed is done.” She replied, her answer having more meaning than his.

She stepped forward again and he quickly put his instrument down and held out his hand to stop her. She stopped, and in an instant of pure instinct, she grabbed the hem of her nightshirt and lifted it over her head, dropping it to the floor beside her. Her mind was reeling: she could not believe what she had just done although she felt that she had no choice but to do it.

“Go back to bed, Evey.” V growled.

“Not alone, V…” She whispered as she stepped up against him. “If you think that it’s possible that we understand each other, then there’s nothing to fear. Otherwise, I’m just a horny girl looking for a comfort lay, and you can dismiss me as such.”

They stood staring in the gloom at one another for a minute.

“Take off your shirt. Slowly.” She commanded.

V stood completely still for so long that Evey thought that he was refusing her with silence. Tears welled up inside her that he thought her to be so callous as to only seek him out for a pity lay. She tried to think of a way to collect her shirt and exit the room without looking defeated when he reached for his shirt cuff and slowly pulled the tie until the bow undid itself. He looked up at her and stared as her mouth dropped open. He quietly switched to the other cuff and repeated the same action, undoing both shirtsleeves. Then, with a torpidity that defied description, he unlaced the tie at his collar, loosening the opening to his mid chest. V stood up straight then, throwing his shoulders back and raising his chin, and spread out his arms wide in a gesture that said “now what”.

Evey could not help herself as a full body smile washed over her then. She saw another flicker in the hollows where his eyes were and she hoped that he was smiling too. She arched her back, thrust out her chest and cocked her weight on one foot in a pose that emphasized her breasts, hips and the line of her back. 

“Boots, off.” She whispered as her fingers wandered lazily over herself before him.

A low groan came from where V stood and then he sat down heavily in his leather chair behind him, moving his mask but crushing his hat without a second thought. Curling deep into the shadows of the chaise, he placed one boot heel on top of the opposite boot toe and yanked, pulling his foot free with one tug. The abandoned boot flopped to the floor and he sat still, unmoving for a moment.

“I could use a little help with the other one…” His voice emanated from the darkness.

Evey smiled and walked up to his propped foot. She turned slowly and straddled his leg, gripping the boot heel in one hand and bending the toe with her other hand. She bent to afford him a beautiful view of her ass and squeezed his trapped leg between her naked thighs. She wiggled a little as if struggling with his boot and was rewarded with a small moan from behind her as she yanked the boot free in one smooth movement. Then she turned and stood before him again, dropping the boot pointedly to the floor. Leather creaked as V’s fingers tightened on the armrests of his chair, and Evey threw back her head and grinned.

“Now the pants…” She husked.

He loomed out of the depths of the chair and stood very close to her. Without looking away from her, he reached down and unzipped his breeches. For the first time, he reached for her and grasped her hands in his. The chill of the room had cooled her and when he touched her, he felt superheated. She licked her lips at the thought of how warm she would feel with him pressed against her. He guided her hands to his waistband and wrapped them in the fabric. Evey rolled his pants down his legs, taking his underwear with them, and crouched at his ankles as he stepped out of them. He towered above her in nothing but his shirt and wig, with only the edges of him outlined in lamplight. A moment of disbelief swept over Evey and she wrapped her arms around his calves and hugged him. She closed her eyes and squeezed tight, as if he would disappear on her, and she heard his breath catch in his throat at the gesture.

The rustle of fabric passed by her ears as his shirt dropped to the floor beside her and she felt hands reach under her arms and raise her upright. Scooped into his embrace and pressed firmly against him, Evey melted into the amazing warm of his naked body. One of his arms wrapped around her waist and the other tilted her chin up as he bent to kiss her for the first time. His lips, warm but unsure, pulled and pressed at her lower lip as the tips of his wig tickled her neck. A tingling rush pulsed through her and she parted her lips slightly, welcoming him in. His kiss sank into her deep and long as he curved his body around hers and loosed his fingers in her hair. A rumble in his chest worked its way up and out until the shudder forced their lips to part as they held each other in breathless wonder. V’s grip on her tightened as he broke their shared revelry and hungrily demanded another kiss. And another. And another.

His fingers began to trace a slow path from the base of her neck to the small of her back over and over again with hypnotic calm as his other hand held her face and gathered her curls around her.

“I did not think you to be real standing before me in your nightgown.” He whispered when he came up for air. “I thought that the music had conjured you up…”

“What was that piece anyway? The one you were playing when I entered…”

“It is my own composition. It doesn’t have a name.” His fingers caressed her neck almost making her swoon.

“But, such passion, such longing, V! It brought me to you – forced me to be bold. How can it not have a name?”

He quivered under her touch then and bent his head to rest in the crook of her neck, his lips gliding over her skin as he went.

“The inspiration has a name, but to call the piece by that title would be to lessen the power that the original holds over me. My ode is but a pale reflection.”

“What inspired you then? Justice? A memory from your past?”

“You.” He breathed into her mouth. “The song is you.”

Evey pressed into him fiercely as their lips and hands roamed over each other – to think that yesterday she would have thought twice about touching his hand! Her mouth moved to his ruined ear beneath his wig and sucked his earlobe as his hands explored the fullness of her hips, the dimples of her lower back and the soft swell of curves beneath her breasts. Her body was swollen and alive for him, but a quick glance around the room gave her no easy options that appealed.

“V,” she purred in his ear “I _must_ bed you and I need a soft, warm place to do it properly…”

“Oh. Yes.” He coughed nervously. “I see your point.”

“Come with me.” She broke free from him, walking backwards towards the door while grasping his hand. “Your music conjured me. Let me now do some conjuring of my own…”

He hesitated, as if leaving the room would break the spell between them. She walked back towards him and wrapped him in a blistering kiss.

“Do you believe that I might understand you, V?” She breathed.

V nodded slowly. Evey moved to his side and picked up his violin and bow.

“Then come with me. There’s no risk at all if you believe.” She smiled up at him brilliantly and evaporated his doubts. She headed for the door once again, and when she looked back, he was right behind her.

“I am never afraid when I’m with you.” She whispered, as they slipped into the darkness together.


End file.
